Photo Albums

Photos of Hafez Assad and his son Bashar Assad are festooned all over Syria and Lebanon. This gallery documents how a cult-of-personality for the Assads has been established by the Syrian regime in both countries. The photos come from a variety of sources.

April 30, 2008

April 29, 2008

There appears to be a competition between Iranian and Saudi authorities over who can come up with the more ridiculous attempt to police so-called "public morals." Apropos yesterday's post on Iran's struggle to defend against a "Barbie Invasion," here is today's wacky headline of the day:

April 27, 2008

Gotta love the cover of the latest issue of TelQuel, which goes all US Weekly on King Mo6. In the "His Majesty's Hobbies" cover story, readers get to learn about the king's love of water-sports, cinema, bobybuilding, basketball, and Paris in the springtime. It's a veritable portrait of the monarch as a young man. The question, of course, is who pays for the jet-ski?

Bonus: Don't miss the photo inside the article of Mo6 hanging out by the pool with his furry-friend.

April 26, 2008

Lawyer and human rights activist Shatha Nasser addresses a news
conference in Sanaa April 21, 2008 as her client, the eight-year-old
girl whose marriage was terminated by a court in Sanaa on April 15
listens.

April 25, 2008

April 24, 2008

A review of Robin Wright's Dreams and Shadows in the New York Review of Books ends with these slippery words:

Dictators are ugly, and democracy is, most likely, the least bad way of being governed. But demagogues can be better than democrats at keeping fragile polities together. The Arabs say warily that one day of fitna, schism, is worse than thirty years of tyranny. A quaint and anachronistic notion, maybe, but also the product of a historical experience far longer than most other peoples'.

Two thoughts: (1) Somewhere Moammar Qaddafi is reading the review and laughing. (2) Where is government censor to ban this article, close down the New York Review of Books, and arrest the reviewer? If "the Arabs" don't "democracy" because of their "fragile polities," why not the same for Mr. Max Rodenbeck?

April 23, 2008

Germany condemned Syria on Wednesday for extending the prison sentence of an opposition activist, Kamal Labwani. The German Foreign Ministry said he had only spoken out for democracy and freedom of opinion.

In a statement in Berlin, the ministry said a military court in Damascus had sentenced Labwani, leader of the Liberal Democratic Union, on Wednesday to a further three years in prison after convicting him of spreading propaganda and false information. Added to a 12-year sentence imposed last May, Labwani was now serving 15 years in prison. Berlin condemned that first sentence, when it was holding the European Union presidency last year.

"This new conviction is in breach of the international pact of civil and political rights which Syria signed in 1969," the ministry said. "Non-violently, Dr Labwani is advocating improvements to democracy and freedom of opinion in Syria."

Good to see the Syrian judiciary is open to revisiting and challenging past rulings!

April 21, 2008

Seventy-two-year-old Mohamed Bougrine is not just the "prisoner of three kings". He also held another title - Morocco's oldest political detainee - but that no longer applies.

At the beginning of the month, the old man was given a royal pardon, following several months in jail for what the authorities termed "lacking the respect due to the king"...

"I was arrested for the first time 17 March 1960," he says, every date stuck in his mind.

...Mohamed was imprisoned four times under the next Moroccan king, Hassan II, sometimes for supporting resistance movements, at other times for his political activity.

...After more than a decade in jail, after being tortured and humiliated, and at his advanced age, would he be prepared to go to prison again for his beliefs? The response was as firm as this extraordinary man's convictions.

"I don't think I have been in jail for the last time, and it doesn't scare me," he said. "I am fighting for a better Morocco."

Read the whole article to get a full account of Bougrine's bizarre story.